


Croix, in the Dark

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Chariot gets called whore a whole bunch, Drug Use, F/F, Incest allusion, Love/Hate, Neither of those actually happen just so you know it's just Croix being mean, Pedophilia allusion, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 16:58:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Sedated, watching the Noir Rod project march towards completion, Croix thinks about Chariot, and how much she hates her.Written way too late at night on a computer with a failing hard disc to see which would give out first.  This fic made it.





	Croix, in the Dark

I can't believe I used to love you, you stupid bich.

* * *

Smell is the sense most associated with memory. You knew that, of course. It's why I told you to try a proprietary perfume blend, something indelibly yours. We sold it. It actually still sells. Did you know that? You must, you get residuals from your likeness. Do you use that bank account or did you switch to something all yours, nothing but what you earn teaching to idiot witches whose potential you personally ate out of them?

You don't wear that perfume anymore. Or else Akko would have known. She's stupid as fuck but she's not so dense that she wouldn't have noticed your scent. Of course, you'd have the perfect cover, right? You just needed to like Chariot's perfume.

The Superman defense. Wear your hair differently, carry yourself differently, put on some glasses, count on the entire internet being face blind. And of course understand that nobody on the staff would look into your history.

Did the headmistress know? Maybe she does. Maybe she respects your privacy. Or maybe you fucked her.

* * *

I shouldn't imagine you fucking as often as I do. All the time. Sometimes it's memory: you panting underneath me, you panting above me, trying to match my intensity. But I always lasted longer, and it was always me who brought us both past the brink. Your shows were short, but high-energy, unforgettable. In the bed, as it is on stage.

Sometimes I like to give you elaborate backstories. Akko has featured into them recently. You had a sister who died young and Akko looks so very much like her, maybe. You got knocked up by your dad and passed the baby off to some godforsaken orphanage. If Akko's hair were a little more red, maybe. But those eyes... they're not the right shade, but in the right light, they're red, not brown. Some lost kid, maybe. The timelines don't quite match up, unless we presume your father was a sick piece of shit among sick pieces of shit.

I imagine you fucking your incest daughter like a reverse Oedipus. Or an inside-out Oedipus. However that works. I imagine you degrading yourself. Chance encounters in the library, in your classroom, padding out your meager check with trips to Glastonbury, Blytonbury, slumming it in London BDSM clubs or streets with filthy names that have had women prostituting themselves since time began. Some rich bitch with a cosplay fetish pays you to dress up like Chariot du Nord and that night, just that night, you perform for her and Shiny Chariot rides again.

Do I touch myself when I think these things? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I imagine you cold and dead. I touch myself then, most assuredly. You used to be wonderful. Now you're just a sad grownup who couldn't take the last, necessary step to be great. So you left that life behind just as you left me behind.

I hate you. I hate you so goddamn much.

* * *

When I was a kid I worshiped Jesus Christ as a form of rebellion, before he got boring. I traipsed with the Devil a little, but he wasn't much better. I had to excuse myself from a quote unquote wiccan bookstore before I killed everybody inside with my teeth. My teeth, Chariot.

Nyarlat Hotep was the only logical choice. The voice and soul of the Outer Gods. Cavendish's brood worship Shub-Niggurath herself, and you better believe I'm not saying her name out loud as I write this polemic in my head on a lonesome night wondering what will die first, this fucking computer with a hard drive that's decided to waste away to nothing, or these words I type as I try to parse just how much I've come to despise everything you are and do.

Nyarlat Hotep. I pledged to him in dreams. I saw his light show, the burning Earths, the Dreamlands in infinite splendor. I heard the chimes of Daoloth beyond the gulf of sight, in places deep in my soul that move with mechanical precision. Machinery is beautiful in a way that you could never be.

You're the artist. I'm the scientist. I see poison, you see wallpaper dye. I see brain-eating heavy metals, you see a liquid mirror. I see fissionable material, you see glow-in-the-dark clock faces. You were burning your candle at both ends, you stupid bitch, and I want to think you knew that.

See my Noire Fuel Spirit. See the shapes it takes, brutally efficient, mirrors of nature's machines. No need for life lessons here. When she awakes she will burn the path to the World-Changing Magic.

Some call it the Resurrection Body, the Reality Revision, the Revelation, the Opening of the Way. I call it what it is. To adorn it with more frippery is to deify it, put it beyond reach. Not in the way the true gods are out of reach; in the way that little minds like Jesus and Satan put things out of reach, little powers that play at greatness. Dime store philosophy, reams of obtuse laws and commandments. Proper nouns that human mouths can pronounce.

The hollow ringing of Daoloth is the truth that machinery and mathematics are more true than sight, sound, taste. The sight of the light leaving those rubies in your eyes. The sound of your voice when I told you what the Dream Fuel Spirit did. The taste of your tears, happy tears, the last time I kissed you, when you were so sure the world was turning right once more.

The truth is, every single day of my life I think about killing myself.

* * *

Every single day. Without fail. I see the Noire Rod, I think of asking it to bite my head clear off, digest my brain, integrate me into the system. Free me from all these chemicals that conspire to make me feel subhuman.

A little slip from a Sorcery Unit and ah, freedom. A few elements escaping from containment and accidentally infesting some food I cooked up in boredom. Deniable. A tragic accident. (Other than the Noire Rod. But nobody will be left to oppose the Noire Rod when it is ready, and nobody will have the right to judge me.)

I don't know why I haven't done it yet. As long as the World-Changing Magic is out there I have a reason to put off death. When the future of magic is certain, when the way is clear, when I've shown you all, shown all of you motherfuckers, who it was you perpetually undervalued, then I can die, and then you will all be sorry.

You'll cry for me, you whore. You'd better cry for me when I die.

* * *

I miss you.

You don't deserve this. You don't deserve the mild spite and casual lust of your fellow teachers. (Finnelan wants to fuck you, doesn't she? Do they all? Am I projecting? I can't be. Surely they see your ass every day as your skirt drapes down upon it.) You should be a dawning goddess worshiped by prostrate mundane humans willingly burning their dreams to make you stronger.

You were an artist, I am a scientist. The one-two punch. Fuel and fire. Knight and queen. Angel and god. With me to give you wings you could have flown into the sun and burned beautifully.

I look up old videos sometimes, to see your performances, to see you when you still had hope in your own future. Is the light gone from your eyes forever?

Is it gone from mine, so that all I see is a world where magic is dying?

I want to tell you that all is forgiven and I'm sorry that I let you go. I want to punch you in the face and tell you to eat me out, yes while you're bloody-nosed, did I stutter? I want to kiss you. I want to love you again. I want to eat you out and hear you try not to scream.

Every time I breathe it's in defiance of my every subconscious thought. These things I do because of you. Maybe not for you; maybe not for me. Maybe not for the people I should be doing them for.

I fucking hate you.

Please don't hate me.

If I were braver I would light myself up with a cocktail of the finest drugs I could synthesize, pure and untainted, so that when I died of fentanyl overdose it was when I was ready to die and no sooner. (Beautiful stuff. It looks so nondescript and kills so surely, so without mercy, though with kindness.)

Even now the Fuel Spirits are drinking deep of my fear, my sadness, my anxiety. My babies, feeding from their mama, the way nature intended.

I'm doing something right. I must be.

* * *

The Noire Rod will change everything. It has to.

I hope it kills you. I hope it kills me. I hope the world bursts into flame and every beautiful thing dies suffering and alone. I want you to die with Akko's ashes in your mouth. I want to die of you crushing my skull in with one of those patented Chariot kicks, the most beautiful thing to be bludgeoned to death with.

I'm dosed to the gills on heroin, watching the numbers crawl across my screen as the Noire Rod approaches completion, bit by bit.

When the Grand Triskelion is unveiled I want to wish for a world of miracles where nobody has to hurt and everything you do is as beautiful and perfect as you were in the summer. When I was a person who did things to make people happy and not an evil piece of shit creating a crowbar to pry open the chest of the Earth and force the heart to beat again.

* * *

I want to die.

I want to live to see you happy.

I want to live to see you choke in my hands.

I want to die.

* * *

Life is pain and all this frippery is to try and distract ourselves as efficiently from it as possible.

* * *

If I ever love you again, I want to love you forever, as much as you deserve. If it were only so possible. If my heart could ever beat. If the World-Changing Magic could make a better world for us.

When I die, and I know it has to be soon, Chariot du Nord, Ursula Callistis, may you live to bury me, and love again.

I hate you, you goddamn whore. If there is a heaven, I'll wave to you from hell when you lean out your window.

"I miss you."

* * *

_The words split the silence._

She had spoken them. Not thought.

It was already too late. Reality was stained indelibly. Words have power; intent is the precursor to miracle.

Through the opoid haze Croix clenched her fist and against all odds felt love.

Miracles are paracausal; the effect blossoms in all directions, past and present and future.

* * *

She looks Chariot in the eye and promises that she will return.

Miracles are paracausal.

The effect blooms.


End file.
